The gospel songs of Bill and Gloria Gaither have been cherished for generations. This collection features contemporary solo piano arrangements of their most popular melodies. Approximate performance times are included. Titles: Because He Lives * Come, Holy Spirit * The Family of God, with Jesus, We Just Want to Thank You * Gentle Shepherd * He Touched Me * I Will Serve Thee * Jesus Is Lord of All * The King Is Coming * The Longer I Serve Him * Something Beautiful * There's Something About That Name.

Marvelous Rise of Superheroes in Cinema: Evolution of the Genre from Sequels to Universes addresses the superhero movie genre's transformation between 1978 and 2019. To emphasize and illustrate the conceptual and thematic transformation, the main conventions of the genre are scanned through several periods, focusing on the developmental age of the genre, including the dominant period of DC Comics-based superhero movies (1978-1997) and the Marvel "boom" (2000-2007), and the contemporary age. For this purpose, the book traces the fundamentals of superheroes from the first appearance of Superman in Action Comics #1 (1938) to the final installment of the MCU's Phase 3, Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019). The transformation has two significant points. First, the genre's main conventions have been in a change. Second, the genre's focus has changed from sequel filmmaking to the universe concept. The study investigates the Marvel Cinematic Universe's dominant, leading, and major role in the genre's evolutionary process. Besides, the future of the superhero movie genre is questioned through the multiverse concept to broaden an understanding of the genre's following directions.

Peter Beaven's tale leads us through the pitfalls and triumphs of a career in choir directing and church music, orchestral conducting, and professional singing in choirs and stage works. His teaching experiences are just as hair-raising as his performing life. Being there at the inception of the GCSE music exam, as a teacher, he felt it wasn't an improvement on the previous exam and became disenchanted with education, in general, and music education in particular. The author maintains that he failed every exam he ever sat, adding much weight to his argument, but also admits to a modicum of success along the way. Despite earlier difficulties with a genetic neuropathy, he conquered the disabilities to regain an organ technique at the age of fifteen, which has served him well for over fifty years. His adventures with the military have been a twenty-year expedition through extraordinary happenings, personalities, and experiences. All worthwhile but in marked contrast to many other facets of his career.

In The Gaithers and Southern Gospel, Ryan P. Harper examines songwriters Bill and Gloria Gaither's Homecoming video and concert series-a gospel music franchise that, since its beginning in 1991, has outperformed all Christian and much secular popular music on the American music market. The Homecomings represent "southern gospel." Typically that means a musical style popular among white evangelical Christians in the American South and Midwest, and it sometimes overlaps in style, theme, and audience with country music. The Homecomings' nostalgic orientation-their celebration of "traditional" kinds of American Christian life-harmonize well with southern gospel music, past and present. But amidst the backward gazes, the Homecomings also portend and manifest change. The Gaithers' deliberate racial integration of their stages, their careful articulation of a relatively inclusive evangelical theology, and their experiments with an array of musical forms demonstrate that the Homecoming is neither simplistically nostalgic, nor solely "southern." Harper reveals how the Gaithers negotiate a tension between traditional and changing community norms as they seek simultaneously to maintain and expand their audience as well as to initiate and respond to shifts within their fan base. Pulling from hisfield work at Homecoming concerts, behind the scenes with the Gaithers, and with numerous Homecoming fans, Harper reveals the Homecoming world to be a dynamic, complicated constellation in the formation of American religious identity.

This volume examines the stories of Genesis in music, showing how musical settings can illuminate many of the Bible's most noted tales. Helen Leneman studies oratorios, operas and songs (as well as their librettos) to shed light on how Genesis has been understood and experienced over time. Examining an extensive range of musical settings of stories from the book of Genesis, Leneman offers an overview of chiefly 19th and 20th century musical engagements with this biblical text. Leneman first discusses how Eve's inner thoughts are explored by noted French composers Jules Massenet and Gabriel Faure. The text then enters the deep waters of Noah's flood in examination of several compositions, including two unusual settings by Igor Stravinsky and Benjamin Britten, as well as more conventional settings by Saint-Saens and Donizetti. Two major 19th century oratorio settings of Abraham's story by lesserknown German composers Martin Blumner and Karl Mangold provide fascinating illuminations of the Abraham narratives, whereas parts of Rebecca's story are found in works by Cesar Franck, Ferdinand Hiller, and most unusually, by a French woman composer, Celanie Carissan. Finally, Leneman shows how Joseph's story was set in numerous oratorios (including by Handel) but that one of the most important works based on his story is an opera by 18th century French composer Etienne Mehul. In addition to discussing these larger 19th century works, Leneman also examines several interesting atonal 20th century works based on the stories of Eve and the Flood, shedding new light on the history of the interpretation of the Book of Genesis.

Among the writers of the Syriac Christian tradition, none is as renowned as St. Ephrem of Nisibis (ca. 307-373), known to much of the later Christian world simply as "the Syrian." The great majority of Ephrem's works are poetry, with the madrase ("teaching songs") especially prominent. This volume presents English translations of four complete madrase cycles of Ephrem: On the Fast, On the Unleavened Bread, On the Crucifixion, and On the Resurrection. These collections include some of the most liturgically oriented songs in Ephrem's corpus, and, as such, provide a window into the celebration of Lent and Easter in the Syriac-speaking churches of northern Mesopotamia in the fourth century. Even more significantly, they represent some of the oldest surviving poetry composed for these liturgical seasons in the entire Christian tradition. Not only are the liturgical occasions of the springtime months a source of colorful imagery in these texts, but Ephrem also employs traditional motifs of warm weather, spring rainstorms, and revived vegetation, which likely reflect Hellenistic literary influences. Like all of Ephrem's poetry, these songs express early Christian theology in language that is symbolic, terse, and vibrant. They are rich with biblical allusions and references, especially to the Exodus and Passion narratives. They also reveal a contested religious environment in which Ephrem strove to promote the Christian Pascha and Christian interpretations of Scripture over and against those of Jewish communities in the region, thus maintaining firm boundaries around the identity and practices of the churches.